Iran threatens to back out of nuclear deal if US ends waiver

IRAN said yesterday it might reconsider its co-operation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog if the US backed away from a deal Tehran struck with world powers.

President Donald Trump has until the end of the week to decide whether to continue waiving US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports under the terms of the nuclear pact that eased economic pressure on Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear programme.

“If the United States does not meet its commitment in the (deal), the Islamic Republic of Iran would take decisions that might affect its current co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s nuclear chief, was quoted as telling Yukiya Amano, the director-general of the agency.

Mr Trump has described the 2015 deal, signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, as one of the worst made in US history. Jim Mattis, Mr Trump’s defence secretary, has previously said that the US should consider staying in the agreement unless it was proved that Tehran was not abiding by the agreement or that it was not in the US national interest to do so.

More than 50 national security experts, retired US military officers and members of Congress signed a letter released yesterday urging Trump’s administration not to jeopardise the deal, fearing it would trigger instability. While a US withdrawal would not kill the deal, which was jointly signed by the US, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, allies worry it could prompt Iran to renege on it.

Other signatories are concerned that Mr Trump is trying to use recent protests in Iran as a vehicle to place further pressure on the EU to abandon its support for the nuclear deal.

It emerged yesterday that as many as 2,000 protesters have been arrested since widespread anti-government rallies began on Dec 28.

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Prize winner living in exile in the UK, said she was in contact with some of the detained at Evin prison in the capital Tehran.

She said many of them were students demonstrating at the lack of jobs in the country. “They said they had been tortured and forced to say they have been paid to take to the streets and have acted for a foreign country,” she told Radio France Internationale.